This invention relates to a refining vat for the separation of wort from spent grain, comprising a sieve base having below it a discharge base with a central drain hole.
Refining vats are used in breweries for separating the extract-rich wort from the spent grain.
In the designing of these refining vats, care must be taken not only to prevent the wort from draining away too quickly (which might cause the liquid layer below the sieve base to be broken) but also to prevent excessively slow drainage of the wort (which might cause undesirable stagnation in the space between the sieve base and the discharge base). In the latter case there would be a particular risk of the spent grain in the radially outer portions of the refining vat not being uniformly leached, with the leaching instead taking place preferentially in those more central portions of the vat which lie closer to the central drain hole.